The Experience of Overseas Chinese

Gold Mountain Trail and Chinese Coolies

San Francisco is often called Old Gold Mountain in Chinese. The area around Melbourne, Australia is the newer Gold Mountain. Both names relate to Chinese migration during the 19th century for gold mining and for economic opportunities.

The opening up of treaty ports did not only facilitate a trade in goods, it also allowed for more movement of people. From ports like Xiamen, Guangzhou and Tianjin, Chinese began to move abroad for work.

Discoveries of gold was one reason to get on a boat from China. It took Chinese workers to California and other US states, as well as Australia, Canada, South Africa and elsewhere. But work was not just in gold mining. Tin or rubber mining were also attractive. As was trading. Migration was not just to the English-speaking world. Southeast Asia, such as what is now Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore was also attractive and popular.

For most of the Qing Dynasty period, emigration from China was illegal. Only around 1852 was emigration from Guangdong province authorized by local officials. One provision of the Convention of Beijing in 1860, which ended the Second Opium War, allowed emigration finally from anywhere in China. However, it took some time until Chinese consuls would travel and visit the Chinese diaspora and listen to their concerns and advocate for them. By the end of the 19th century, experienced diplomats were doing their best to address the conditions that Chinese workers found themselves in abroad.

Prior to the legalization of emigration from China, most migrants had originated from the south of China and usually coastal areas in Fujian or Guangdong province. Often, they were minorities like the Hakka or Hokkien. Often their strong village cultures and defensive skills helped them adjust to difficult environments, like Borneo.

Beginning around 1845, large groups of Chinese began being shipped under contract to European controlled colonies. These workers under multiyear contracts were sometimes called coolies. That term came from the Indian Tamil language for wages. In Chinese, kuli can mean hard strength, and the term had traction. French colonists on Reunion (then Isle of Bourbon) in the Indian Ocean recruited from Xiamen in 1845. Within a few years, contracted labour was also being shipped to Cuba, Peru, some other Caribbean sugar colonies and the Northern Territory of Australia. Sometimes, the contract terms in Chinese and the European language differed. For example, one Australian contract had different amounts of food and tea that workers would receive. The Chinese version mentioned more food and tea than the English version.

Cuba was notorious. There, Chinese were essentially enslaved on sugar plantations. When their 8-year contracts ended, different abusive methods were used to prevent them from choosing their next career. They were re-contracted under duress. Many feared that they would never leave. They believed that once they died, their bones would be mixed with the bones of horses or oxen and used for sugar refining.

Chinese workers invariably preferred the alternative, which was free migration under a prepaid ticket or credit-ticket . That is how the Chinese came to California for the 1849 gold rush and the following years. None of them were restricted to any given employer. They could work in gold mining or in any other occupation, such as farming, shopkeeping or later, railway construction. If they had not paid for their journey in advance, they received a credit ticket and would have to pay it back from their wages in the new country. That seemed to be routine and the Chinese gained a reputation for paying their debts promptly, including at retail stores that might allow purchases on credit.

The Chinese gold miners in California and Australia were quite efficient. They usually worked in small groups, with portable equipment for sifting gold from dirt. Workers would specialize in particular activities such as gathering water or operating the small equipment and working cooperatively with pooled incomes. In a 10 person group, they might each get a 10% share of the income.

They were all too often attacked by white miners who sometimes viewed everything as a zero-sum game where one group’s gain must have come at another’s expense. In fact, the ships coming from China and from Honolulu were essential for California’s development. Before the transcontinental railroad arrived almost two decades later, goods and supplies, including food, were in short supply in the west and very expensive. Any trade from the Pacific meant more food, more supplies and more labour than would otherwise have been available. Chinese merchants in San Francisco and in smaller communities were successful because of the good value for money that they brought.

Nevertheless, politicians could and did succeed by stoking anti-Chinese fears and anger. John Bigler, the first governor of California and himself the son of German immigrants, built a political base on attacks on coolies, even though there was not a single Chinese person in California who was an indentured labourer. Bigler muddied the waters by suggesting that every Chinese worker was sending money to a hidden Chinese master, and he stoked up fears that California would soon be overrun with over 100,000 Chinese.

Yes, Chinese workers did often send funds back to China: to their family. These remittances were important, especially if the worker had a wife and children back in China. And payments would be made to pay off any outstanding credit-tickets for passage on the ship to California. But in no way were the Chinese in California slaves or anything close to it. They were generally hard working and entrepreneurial.

This anti-Chinese sentiment grew and by 1882, the USA had enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act. The contrast with the Statue of Liberty, dedicated in 1886 on the eastern coast, is striking. America wanted the European huddled masses but not the Chinese.

Similarly, Canada passed the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, itself modelled on a 1881 bill from New Zealand. Canada imposed a $50 fee or head tax on Chinese immigrants. By 1901 that had doubled and in 1903 had increased again to $500...a huge amount at that time. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923 essentially blocked Chinese immigration completely until Canadian immigration rules evolved after the Second World War. In 2006, Canada’s Prime Minister formally apologized for these racist laws and funding was announced for historical recognition programs.

South Africa, while a British Colony and following the Boer War, tried to balance fears about Chinese workers with the labour shortages in the underground gold mines in the Rand areas close to Johannesburg. Over 50,000 indentured workers were brought in under three-year contracts, predominantly from the Shandong province of China. The Chinese were expressly prohibited from working elsewhere or staying once their contract was up. They had to leave South Africa at the end of their contract and until then, were prohibited from doing anything but unskilled work for the mining company that had hired them.

It was a failure. The Chinese accommodations were acceptable enough, but most else was terrible for the Chinese. Their wages were paid late. Unexpected deductions were taken from their pay. The working conditions underground were wet and dangerous. The food was often poor and the hard-working Chinese had few incentives to do more than the minimum required work. The South African managers used the whip on people who likely would have been more productive had they had a better financial reason.

The Chinese workers, sometimes in solidarity with Indians who were mistreated in their own ways, began collective action to improve treatment. They coordinated with Mahatma Gandhi to bring attention to their mistreatment through non-violent resistance.

These issues coincided with South Africa gaining self-rule from Great Britain and its first Home Rule government discontinued the program.

Chinese in the United States, Australia and elsewhere also self-advocated. The Chinese community there and their allies, which included traders, missionaries and other sympathizers used letter-writing campaigns, letters to the editor, speeches and the like to influence public opinion. Chinese diplomats also became involved in advocacy, both in spreading warnings in China to inform potential travellers of abuses abroad and to demand compensation for abuses. In California, for instance, after white settlers attacked, killed and burned a Chinese area, over $100,000 was eventually paid by American authorities to the Chinese government. It is not clear in this case whether money actually flowed to the victims or their families. In other cases, Chinese fraternal organizations overseas had insurance policies and did flow money to families where a worker died overseas and arranged for his body to be repatriated.

An official commission of three persons: one Chinese education officer and two European customs commissioners, from treaty ports in China, travelled to Havana in 1874 and wrote up a damning report on mistreatments of contract labourers in Cuba. The contracts were subsequently cancelled and the Chinese workers able to escape the island and not have their bones used in sugar refining.

Where Chinese workers and merchants were free, they often prospered. Some merchants, often with bases in multiple locations like Singapore and Australia, or Hong Kong, Honolulu and San Francisco, did very well. Chinese in southeast Asia often brought their families and stayed for generations. Remittances to China from overseas workers were a significant source of funds for late Qing Empire China.

The increased movement of Chinese to and from all the populated continents of the world impacted China. Racialized politics and calls for self-government were not only heard in places like Australia and South Africa. Increasingly, Chinese felt a national re-awakening and discontent with their own Manchu-led government. Calls for Chinese reforms or even a Chinese republic were growing.